People who eat breakfast gain less weight over time, study finds

By Karl W Oestreich

CBS NewsResearchers from the Mayo Clinic analyzed the breakfast habits of about 350 adults. They found that people who ate breakfast regularly only gained an average of about three pounds over the past year. Those who occasionally ate breakfast put on about five pounds, while those who skipped a morning meal entirely gained about eight pounds. Doctors are still working to unravel the correlation between breakfast and weight, but there is a leading theory. "If you eat a good breakfast in the morning, you're less likely to be hungry during the course of the day," Dr. Virend Somers, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic, told CBS News.

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Additional coverage:HealthDay, A Big Belly Bad for Your Heart by Robert Preidt — Even if you're not obese, too much belly fat could harm your ticker, researchers report. "People with a normal weight but a fat belly have more chance of heart problems than people without a fat belly, even if they are obese according to BMI [body mass index]," said study author Dr. Jose Medina-Inojosa. He's with the Mayo Clinic's division of preventive cardiology, in Rochester, Minn. The study included 1,700 people who were aged 45 and older at the time of enrollment and were followed from 2000 to 2016.

Context: If you're wanting to lose pounds and your belly, breakfast may be your best friend. "For reasons that we don't quite understand yet, eating breakfast seems to be a marker of, No. 1, less likelihood of having gained weight recently, and, No. 2, ... a smaller belly circumference and less visceral fat," Dr. Virend Somers, a Mayo Clinic cardiologist, says. Dr. Somers helped oversee a study that showed people who ate breakfast daily gained less weight than those who didn't eat breakfast. "Those who ate breakfast very frequently put on less than 3 pounds in the past year," Dr. Somers says. "Those who ate breakfast maybe one to four times a week put on about 5 pounds. The ones who didn't eat breakfast at all put on about 8 pounds in the year prior to them seeing us." More information about the study can be found in this Mayo Clinic Minute.